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Mountain Goat's Crossbreed. Crossbred because it's shooting for the hoppy hefe thing. Does an okay job of it, I guess. I think sometimes these craft beers can be too hoppy. That metallic note of the hops just dominates. It's the shot of Bailey's.

Pliny the Elder double IPA from Russian River. SO worth the hype (if I were smart I would keep my mouth shut!). Beautiful IPA bursting with hops, with also some really cool stone fruit and citrus flavors. Eminently drinkable.

Cavalier Courage. This is an interesting one. It's an ale developed by or in support of some guy that's dying--perhaps he's dead now, as I saw the Australian Story episode about him some time ago--of Motor Neuron Disease. I consumed this in the midst of a 12 hour session in the kitchen involving everything from locust bean come to pork hocks to pureed pop corn. It's just the right kind of beer for that.

I guess what I'm saying is that if this beer was basically my tombstone after I died from some terrible disease for which there is no cure, I'd be rather pleased. Perhaps I'd even suggest you share one with a homely girl if you had thought to please my ghost.

Another Australian brew: Feral's Hop Hog. This my idea of a hoppy beer. There's enough maltiness and fruitiness going on that it doesn't taste like you're sucking on one of those hop tea bags you can buy at the home brew shop. In fact, this beer is really good. It gets a big fat stamp of approval.

This one was on the shelf with all the Rogue stuff at my local bottleshop and I grabbed it, I admit, without even looking at the bottle properly. I saw the word COFFEE. All the rest was irrelevant. I even thought it was a Rogue--same cap--until I looked closely at the bottle and realised it's not even American. It's another skip beer. Which, considering the run of success I've had with local brewskis, isn't such a bad thing. This one is Burleigh Brewing Company's Black Giraffe Black Coffee Lager. Now that's a name. It's like the Star Wars: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace of Titles With Colons in Them of beers. Except rather than being shit it's actually rather good. It manages to be a novelty beer--a novelty beer being a beer that's really trying to taste of something other than just beer--that I actually like, which in the words of some nameless Guy Ritchie character played Jason Statham is quite a fucking thing. The maple bacon doughnut bullshit that Rogue served up? Devilry. Those sweet fake lambics that are like some mildly booze version of raspberry soft drink? Communism. This, though, it's got a nice coffee kick to it while still being unmistakably beery. A boilermaker of this plus some, I don't know, El Dorado 15 or Ron Zacapa 23 would, in the words of the Great Stath, by quite a fucking thing.

Another beer from the Burleigh Brewing Company. This one's a little more conventional, I guess, than the coffee one as it comes in the form of a hoppy pale ale. It's named--amusingly, if you're silly like me--Hasslehop. It's accessible. Fruity. Almost ... pineapple-y. Summer beer. A bit different to most of the other beers marketed on the basis of their hop content. I've only had, as best I can recall, two of the Burleigh beers and already they stand out as a brewery that's trying to make a product that's approachable but still complex enough for a snobby alcoholicseasoned drinker responsible person with a bit of experience responsibly sampling small amounts of many different beers . I think it's a good drop. And it goes nicely with this:

No video clips this time round. Another Feral. This one is their Sly Fox Summer Ale. Highly carbonated. Maybe a little too carbonated. It does what's on the label, I guess: an easy-drinking ale that isn't too boring. Has a crispness to it that makes me want barbecued pork and prawns and things like that. Maybe this would go nicely with fish and chips.

Mischief from The Bruery, a Belgian-style strong ale which is part of their year-round lineup.

A little tart/acidic at first, which took me by surprise. Then some sweetness and depth in the finish with a good flavor from the hops. Overall it feels light while being very interesting. I think it pairs well with food and will buy it again for sure (it sells for less than $10 for 750 mL).

A true local: Temple's Bicycle Beer, which is brewed in one of Melbourne's inner 'burbs. Very light. Citrusy. Jacked with a little salt, according to the label. I guess this is the beer in hipster cred. Brewed in Brunswick. And the old label, back when I first tried this a couple years ago, went on about some component of the beer--presumably not the finished product, given that it's not that hard to find this stuff--being delivered to ... somewhere ... by bicycle. Whatever. It's alright. I reckon if I had a 24-pack of the stuff it'd take a good while to get through them without assistance, though.

I just cracked open the first bottle of my first attempt at home brew. It's been aging for three weeks. The guys at the shop recommended aging it for at least two months before tasting it but a friend experienced in the ways of home brew said that, given the heat we've had recently, a couple weeks should be enough to get an idea of what the finished (i.e. aged) product will be like. So here goes.

Appearance: placed the glass against a piece of paper so you can get a sense of the colour, I guess. When it was in the bottle--hard to tell, given the dark glass--it looked a whole lot paler than I would've wanted. Looks fine in the glass, though. Cloudy. A little bit of sediment. Suspect I won't have any of that in the second batch as a friend is giving me another container into which I can decant my brew and then let it settle before bottling.

Nose: yeasty, initially. This disappears once it is poured into a glass at which point the nose reminds me of ... well, beer. Not being a smart arse. But you know that generic beer smell of a lot of mass produced beers? Not so much something like Heineken, which has a smell all of its own, but one of those beers that you'd struggle to tell apart from a dozen other, similarly-marketed beers in a blind tasting.

Taste: what strikes me, first up, is the carbonation. It's not like a glass of cola or anything but it's a bit more heavily carbonated than what I normally drink. I suspect this is due to using those 'carbonation drops'. The idea is you put one drop into a 375 mL bottle. I mostly used 330 mL bottles. The drops were also of uneven size. Some had chunks missing. Some were demented, Tetsuoooooooo-style monsters. It's kind of ... bland. I mean, I mostly used a kit and additions suggested by the guys at the shop (some sort of finishing hop that I can't recall the details of and an English yeast) so I suspect this is a product of that. You know, the goal being an easy-drinking, inoffensive pale ale. Crisp. Clean. For a first attempt at, well, dumping a few packets worth of stuff into a container and walking away for a while I'm happy enough.

Congrats on your first homebrew ChrisTaylor! It's a lot of fun and can be very rewarding!

I'd recommend next time using priming sugar (or table sugar) to carbonate your beer and to use a priming sugar calculator so you can match your level of carbonation to the particular beer style you are aiming for.

Sierra Nevada's Celebration Fresh Hop Ale (2012). Billed as a brew suited to the holidays--which means something a little different to me than it does to most of you people. It's hoppy and malty without one of those qualities really beating the other into submission. I've had a so-so experience with Sierra Nevada so far--I really enjoyed their rye beer but think most of the readily available ones are overrated--but I like this one. It's working nicely with a platter of cheeses: particularly the aged French cheddar which has an outside so nasty it looks like it's about to jump up, run over my desk and steal my beer. Afternoon tea of champions.

I don't as a rule go in for flavoured beers but this one is quite nice. It has a undertone of vanilla that reminds me of a beer float made with really good vanilla ice cream.. the nitrogen charge on the can gave a very generous and creamy head.

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Every few years I feel I need to check this local hard cider and see if it had improved. But no, it's still as boring and tasteless as its color (it's the cup on the right hand side!). I do not understand why someone can not make Breton-style cider with our great local Julian apples. I guess it must be a cultural thing, or I was just spoiled with the cider when I lived in France.

No complaints on the Stone Pale Ale, as good as always and even better in draft form.

I was very eager to try the latest batch of Enjoy By IPA from Stone (02.14.14). Disappointment - very little fizz. The taste was right but the beer was practically flat.

Here is the October release, but on draft, for reference (in the front).

My first post in the beer forum! Tonight I opened a bottle of 02.14.14, and you know, it was flat. Lovely flavor, but flat. I wonder if this is intentional? I might write to Stone (once I am sober) to find out. (Also the first time I finished a 22 ounce bottle of Stone in one sitting.)

Even so, the 02.14.14 was (for me) the perfect accompaniment to a spit roasted chicken mechoui, served with cumin and malha heena (coarse Moroccan red salt). With which I ate two thirds of a baguette. The poolish for which I started last night.

The color of 02.14.14 is most beautiful, and looks just like Moroccan tea. Except Moroccan tea is foamy with a head on it, and 02.14.14 is flat.

I was very eager to try the latest batch of Enjoy By IPA from Stone (02.14.14). Disappointment - very little fizz. The taste was right but the beer was practically flat.

Here is the October release, but on draft, for reference (in the front).

My first post in the beer forum! Tonight I opened a bottle of 02.14.14, and you know, it was flat. Lovely flavor, but flat. I wonder if this is intentional? I might write to Stone (once I am sober) to find out. (Also the first time I finished a 22 ounce bottle of Stone in one sitting.)

I don't believe it's intentional. If it is, then why would the draft be so different from the bottled beer?

Anyway, Greg just left for a well-deserved sabbatical, so maybe we should cut him some slack...

Yesterday I tried Anchor's O.B.A. (Our Barrel Ale) on tap at Fathom Bistro, Bait & Tackle. It's a whiskey barrel-aged American strong ale (the same barrels used for their Old Potrero rye whiskey). This one too had little fizz (a bit more than the Stone). Tastewise, very mellow and super drinkable while showing complexity - malts, caramel, nuts. They had some issues in the kitchen, and my food (a simple sausage sandwich) showed up well after I had finished my beer, but between the view and the great beer it was not so bad really.

After finishing MBV I opened a bottle of Shegöat from the Bruery, a "German-style ale". I was not expecting what followed. Beautiful aromas with the most distinctive ester flavors (mostly banana). Also good maltiness. It has flavor and depth. What a fabulous beer. I wish I could find more.

From the Bruery:

Shegöat is a brand new beer to our lineup, based on one of Patrick’s original, multiple award winning homebrew recipes. Based primarily on the traditional weizenbock style of Germany, brewed with both malted barley and wheat, the beer is rich in the flavors of bananas, cloves and caramel with a notes of cake spice hovering in the background. Just like the banana bread that großmutter used to make.